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(PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE BILLY GRAHAM EVANGELISTIC ASSOCIATION)Ravi Zacharias speaks at the World Summit In Defense of Persecuted Christians at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., May 12, 2017.

Millennials are rejecting what they think Christ is — a religious form devoid of the power to touch the soul, according to acclaimed Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias. Unfettered sexual expression has filled the void but has left them empty, he said.

In a speech Friday afternoon at the first-ever World Summit in Defense of Persecuted Christians, sponsored by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, before 600 advocates for the persecuted church and victims of persecution, the apologist exhorted those in attendance to dispense with a comfortable, “tepid Christianity” as a “scorching paganism” rises in the West. He recounted that today he is inspired to meet even 12- and 13-year-olds who tell him that they want to do what he does, vigorously defend the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Following his remarks, Zacharias told The Christian Post in a sit-down interview that he and his colleagues were speaking at a state university in Michigan when a student stood up during Q&A and said that he used to be a Christian for 18 years but then walked away from his faith.

Although one of his colleagues answered that man’s question that night, Zacharias tracked him down and ended up speaking to him by phone. He asked the young man if he had found answers to the questions that he wanted answers to but never got while a Christian and inquired whether he had found meaning and purpose in life by rejecting the Christian faith.

The young man said “no” to both questions.

“It is not that [millennials] are abandoning [Christianity] in favor of something else that is meeting their needs,” Zacharias said. “They have come to the conclusion that there are no answers anywhere.”

“And that’s what we need to avoid.”

Zacharias believes that if young people thought answers could be found in the Christian faith, and that the head and the heart can be bridged, they would give Christians a hearing. Yet what has also happened is that sexual expression has displaced real spirituality and has become “the supreme pursuit of fulfillment,” he said.

“And what they have done is burned themselves out before they are even in their mid-20s and they have come away empty-handed as well.”

Absent the spirit, he noted, one has nothing left but the body.

“And if the body indulges itself you’re going to come away empty. It is only the touching of the soul that lifts you to perpetual novelty,” he emphasized.

“The millennials have rejected what they think is Christ, but what they have actually rejected is a form of religious expression.”